Previous models of the choice of kin-provided child care assumed that the presence of other forms of in-kind support from relatives nearby was inconsequential to estimating effects of economic and demographic factors on the decision to use kin-provided child care. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of the Class of 1972, it is shown that this assumption is incorrect because use of kin-provided child care and intrafamily in-kind resource exchanges are interrelated. When the association between use of kin-provided child care and the presence of other family in-kind exchanges is ignored, it is shown that estimated effects for income, the price of child care, and maternal characteristics are underestimated. The findings provide a better understanding of why parents choose kin-provided child care by confirming that this decision is a part of a larger set of parental decisions about involvement in resource exchanges within extended families.

The relationship between income inequality and economic growth within the US is analyzed using state level data. Income inequality in the US since 1960 is described. A two-step causal model is employed to test the institutionalist contention that income inequality leads to socio-political instability, which has a negative impact on economic progress. The empirical results offer support for the institutionalist view.

The policy issue of work replacing welfare is examined through evidence derived from the Panel Survey of Income Dynamics (1981-1988). Results indicate that welfare recipients supplement the earnings from low paying occupations with public assistance. Further, this income strategy responds to changes in economic incentives. For example, higher wages are associated with a greater probability of working without a welfare subsidy while lower wages are associated with a higher probability of mixing welfare and work. These results underscore the importance of liveable wage levels in providing for a durable substitution of work for welfare. The results also support Solow's recommendations of packaging welfare and work for those who find their occupational choices limited to the lower end of the labor market.

The notion social class attains a well-defined theoretical content in the works of the classical political economists, who defined classes on the basis of the specific income form that each category of people (class) obtains. As economic theory became increasingly apologetic after the Marginalist Revolution (setting itself the aim of justifying capitalism), the theory of class has been totally banished from the corpus of modern (neoclassical) economic science. It is asserted that the scientific elements inherent in classical political economy's class theory were preserved by the Marxist class theory, which further revolutionized the classical approach, creating a new, purely non-economistic and non-mechanical relationist class theory, and forming thus a vivid economic-sociological approach to social classes. On the basis of the Marxist approach, complex problems concerning the class structure of contemporary societies can be tackled.

It is suggested that the new institutionalism contains ambiguous and contradictory notions of change. By setting up a model that explains institutional constraints on decision makers, the new institutionalism correctly points out the limits of a rational choice framework of economic decision making. However, by failing to explain the sources and avenues of modifications of those constraints, the new institutionalism is unable to provide a satisfactory explanation of change. Instead, a patchwork of exogenous factors is found, such as technology, culture, and ideology, which feed into institutional change in unclear ways. Those factors for change should be examined directly, rather than through the proxy of institutions.

Silvio Gesell (1862-1930) pioneered a version of the market economy that was about competitive entrepreneurship but not about capitalism. The financial interests of the hoarders of scarce bank financing and those leveraged with speculative land dealings were to be sacrificed for the greater good of a nation of free and enterprising men and women. Gesell was a radical reformer and quite a famous one, having received more than a respectful mention in John Maynard Keynes' The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. Keynes dubbed Gesell a non-Marxian socialist. Gesell founded the Free Economy school, which is undergoing a renaissance today in Eastern Europe as a possible model for a redesigned transition economy.

The answer to the questions about what economists believe and why they do not all believe the same things revolves around the nature, variety, and uses of authority in economics. The data used are the various frameworks that economists, knowingly and unknowingly, employ to formulate their questions and organize their intellectual endeavors. These devices are called patristic traditions, or cultural and intellectual frameworks, or governing legacies, or several other phrases. They all connote authority systems, traceable to specific intellectual or cultural precursors, or authorities. The central proposition is that the specific set of governing legacies that each individual economist possesses effectively guides his or her thinking. By recognizing these authorities it is possible to more effectively understand others' minds and increase the ability to persuade.

New empirical evidence is provided about the existence of a Catholic wage premium. A simple allocation-of-time model provides two explanations for the observation that those persons raised in the Catholic religion earn more than their non-Catholic counterparts. The Catholic religion may add to a person's stock of human capital and/or it may act as a signal of desirable labor market characteristics such as discipline, honesty, trustworthiness, and high motivation.

An attempt is made to analyze the phenomenon of new private universities in non-Western nations, focusing on the developing world in general, and Asia in particular. Within the context of a few case studies that reflect the breadth and diversity of this revolutionary growth in post-secondary higher education, an attempt is made to answer, among other things, questions about these institutions' missions, the models they are following, the challenges they face, how they are coping with their relationship to existing public universities, and how they are dealing with tuition and budgetary issues.